1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to dolls, and, more particularly, to an ordering and manufacturing system for manufacturing doll heads that have realistic faces closely matching those of particular children.
2. Statement of the Problem
Dolls have been in existence for time immemorial. At one end of the spectrum are those unique dolls that are so highly crafted, typically with ceramic heads, that they are truly sculpted and painted to be lifelike and corresponding to a particular human's image. Such dolls can range in price from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. Each doll is an individual work of art. At the other end of the spectrum are the mass-produced dolls having a typical and perhaps generic doll face usually made of a vinyl or plastic material. Such mass-manufactured dolls are inexpensive, usually costing well less than one hundred dollars.
Many parents desire to have a doll that closely resembles their child, yet are unable to afford the extremely expensive cost of having a doll made by hand by an artist or dollmaker. A need exists in the marketplace to have a high quality doll head closely matching the features and characteristics of a child's face yet that can be produced at a price closer to that of the mass-produced "baby-faced" dolls than to that of the unique, finely sculpted dolls.
A patentability search for systems and methods of manufacturing realistic doll heads resulted in the following patents:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,795,397 issued to Stevens teaches creating a doll that is a "twin" for a child. Stevens discloses a method of making a doll simulating a particular newborn child wherein the weight of the doll exactly matches that of the child, the length of the doll exactly matches that of the child, and at least the handprints or footprints are imprinted onto the doll.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,987 issued to Hull et al. pertains to creating a doll having a personalized, photographic face imprinted on the doll head. The doll is made by the steps of (a) taking a photograph of the face of the person, (b) constructing a doll with a blank face made of material impregnable by heat-cured inks in a photographic printing process, and (c) printing the photograph with heat-cured inks on the face of the doll.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,009,626 issued to Katz is a computerized process of creating a three-dimensional lifelike representation of the head portion of a person on a doll. A video image of the head of a person is sent to a computer, which digitizes the image and conforms it to a three-dimensional substrate structure that matches the head of the subject. The image of the person's head is printed on a flexible sheet fabric material in the form of a "azimuthal-type group of connected sector photographic projections." This is illustrated in FIGS. 2-4 showing the printouts of the flat photographic imagery derived from a photograph and transformed into a printout image for fixation to the doll's head. The imprinted flexible material is then applied to the three-dimensional substrate substance. This represents a more precise and unique approach.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,314,370 issued to Flint also provides a process for producing a doll having the face of a person. The '370 patent provides a doll having a head with a three-dimensional facial area, posing a person in front of a color video camera, aligning the person's face in the camera with lateral and up and down boundary markers, transferring the signal from the camera to a color transfer printer using a wax layer to transfer the representation of the face onto a layer of fabric, and trimming and securing the fabric to the facial area of the doll. Again, this represents a precise approach.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,648,188 and 4,659,319 issued to Blair provide a system for producing three-dimensional sculptures using a photograph or picture as a guide. The method discloses the steps of providing a photograph, removing the backing from the photograph, producing a picture of the photograph on a pliable film, mounting the pliable film onto a pliable mass of material, manipulating the pliable mass through the picture of the photograph that is on the pliable film, subjecting the manipulated sculpture mass to a hardening process, placing the photograph with the backing removed into plastic by a lamination process, and placing the hardened material into a "Vacu-form" machine so as to place the laminated photograph onto the sculpture.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,892,501 issued to Girelli sets forth a method of fabrication for a doll's head.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,004,442 issued to Lemelson et al. pertains to a series of dolls representing various ages of the same person. The head is shaped, configured, and decorated to represent the same living being at different ages.
At least three commercially available products provide a doll bearing a resemblance to a child. The Pleasant Company, 8400 Fairway Place, Middleton, Wis. 53562, in its "Holiday 1995 The American Girls Collection" offers 20 separate pre-manufactured dolls of varying skin tone, hair color, and eye color, and hair styles. The American Girl dolls are mass or pre-manufactured in large quantities for inventory and retail sales. Each face in the collection of 20 dolls has the same basic shape, with 3 of the 20 dolls having different-shaped eyes and noses based on racial characteristics. The choice is limited to the 20 pre-manufactured dolls displayed. The consumer looks at photographs of the 20 dolls and selects the one with coloring closest to that of their child.
A second commercially available product is BABY SO BEAUTIFUL, manufactured by Playmates. These dolls are also mass or pre-manufactured in large quantities for inventory and retail sales. A television commercial shows a range of 12 to 16 pre-manufactured dolls in which the skin tone, eye color, and hair color and style vary; however, the faces of the dolls appear to be identical.
In a third commercially available product, trademarked MY TWINN by MY TWINN, 31129 Via Colinas, #702, West Lake Village, Calif. 91361, a more customized approach to matching the features and characteristics of a doll head to a child is obtained. For this product, the consumer selects from seven different eye colors, four different skin colors, and ten different hair colors to produce a doll head more closely matching the hair color, hair style, eye color, and skin color of the child, even including the addition of freckles. A photograph of the child is also provided to enable an artist to individually add features to the doll head to more closely match the doll head to the child. The MY TWINN doll, as with the American Girl doll and the Baby So Beautiful doll, also uses a single doll head that has been modified to have Caucasian, African-American, or Oriental nose, eye, and lip features. The MY TWINN doll by offering greater selection at the point of purchase provides 16,800 combinations (7 eye colors.times.4 skin tones.times.10 hair colors.times.10 hair styles.times.6 hair lengths=16,800) to more closely match the appearance of the doll head to the appearance of the child on a mass production basis. The addition of freckles is not included in the aforesaid calculation.
A need, however, exists to provide an ordering and manufacturing system for producing doll heads, a system that produces a unique doll head that much more closely matches the appearance of the child, without going to the expense of sculpting the doll head, or using any of the high technological and costly approaches discussed above with respect to the patents.
3. Solution to the Problem
The present invention solves the above-stated problem by providing a "one-of-a-kind" doll head that is custom-made to look just like the face of a particular child. Although the doll head is pre-manufactured, every doll head of the present invention is further hand crafted using ten facial characteristics to match the child's face shape, hair color, hair style, eyes, skin tone, etc., as described below. This combination of preproduction and hand crafting provides a doll head that is custom produced to match a particular child at a reasonable cost, in contrast to the American Girl and Baby So Beautiful dolls, in which large quantities of nearly identical dolls are mass produced in large quantities.
In the preferred embodiment, the customer, using the ten facial characteristics, chooses from a predetermined number of face shapes, skin tones, eye colors, eyelash colors, eyebrow thicknesses, shapes, and colors, and hair colors, cuts, styles, and lengths those characteristics that most closely match the child's features.
For example, to provide a doll that is closer to the actual physiognomy of the child than offered in the prior art, seven basic face shapes are utilized to provide a more realistic appearance. These shapes comprise rounded, oval, pear, rectangular, thinner rectangular, thinner heart, and wider heart face shapes. A doll head having the particular face shape chosen is obtained. The other characteristic features chosen are then attached or applied to the doll head. Thus, a doll head is constructed that more closely resembles the child's face than has previously been achievable, and at a more affordable cost than previous for such a unique doll.